The aim of the epidemiologic study is to explore psychosocial factors that predict recovery from serious illness and surgery among the elderly. This pilot study has the advantage of being prospective. The respondents will be a subsample of the 2,800 randomly chosen men and women 65 and over who are currently participants in the Yale Health and Aging study in New Haven, Ct. All subjects who incur a myocardial infarction, stroke, or hip fracture will be invited to participate in the pilot study. Interviews will be conducted at 6 weeks and 6 months post-hospitalization and will assess the importance of several factors which previous empirical and theoretical work suggests may be important to the recovery process: 1) religious attitudes and beliefs, 2) social networks and support, 3) demoralization and depression, 4) coping and appraisal process, 5) attitudes toward health and illness. Data from these interviews will be combined with 1) baseline (pre-illness) data on networks, depression, and physical health status and 2) data from medical records concerning the severity and prognosis of illness to predict who will recover from illness and who will not. As some of the areas to be examined, especially at 6 weeks and 6 months after the hospitalization, are relatively unexplored, a major goal of the pilot study will be to develop and test instruments which can be used in future studies. The long term objective of this pilot effort is to develop measures which will then form the basis of a larger study of a cohort of elderly men and women.